ABSTRACT
Already classical Greek and Latin writers commented on the obvious interrelationship between fables and proverbs, theorizing as it were about which of the genres came first. In other words, does the proverb that adds a bit of moralizing or ethical wisdom at the end of a fable summarize its content or is the fable nothing but an explanatory comment on the original proverb. One thing is for certain, in today’s society traditional fables play a much smaller role than they used to, and most people don’t even recall the fables any longer that hide behind such proverbial expressions as “to bell the cat” or “sour grapes.” For these proverbial fable reductions see the detailed articles by Paul Franklin Baum and Sandra Dolby-Stahl which have been reprinted together with eleven other major essays on proverbs and fables in Pack Carnes (ed.), Proverbia in Fabula: Essays on the Relationship of the Fable and the Proverb (Bern: Peter Lang, 1988).
